Awakening from the Deep Sleep: A Powerful Guide for Courageous Men

Rating:
Summary: I recommend this book for every man--and woman--I know.
Review: Awakening from the Deep Sleep has powerful relevance even eight years after it was published. Deep sleep is an apt metaphor for the condition in which many of us men find ourselves, and Pasick's analysis is right on target. He focuses on our family training to hold back emotionally, the isolating competitiveness of the male role in society, and most importantly (for me), barriers to tapping the riches of a deep emotional life and deep friendships. Pasick writes in a clear and heartfelt style, and he shares many stories, some of them movingly personal. Yet we are also aware of the world of learning and experience behind his Phd. and his practice as a clinical psychologist. But more importantly, we sense his experience--and it's an awakened experience--as a human being. I defy you to read this book without thinking of three or four people you feel you should a send a copy to.

Rating:
Summary: This book is truly awakening
Review: I bought this book at the recommendation of a marriage therapist. Wow! I couldn't believe how accurately it described my lifestyle. As someone who is working actively to save my marriage, I found the book very helpful in identifying some of the habits I've developed that were affecting my marriage. It also helped me recognize that I'm not the only one that has fallen into a deep sleep. After reading the first chapter I contacted three of my closest friends and told them to read this book.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Companion Piece to Bly's
Review: The author does a good job of looking at the issues of social isolation, emotional over-dependence upon wives, addictions to work and substances, and aggression in men as results of how males are raised in our culture. He gives many interesting ideas on how things could be changed for the better. As a therapist, I have used many of these ideas to challenge stereotypes that some men and boys see as defining them, but which are really limiting them.

By itself, however, the reader does not end up with a clear enough idea of what an alternative definition of masculinity would look like. However, if paired with the difficult-to-read and somewhat harsh lessons of Robert Bly's "Iron John", the combination does give you both the abstract and the specific, the historical and the contemporary, of what masculinity could mean in a better world.